Echo of the Reich

47

27 July 2012

The following morning, just after five thirty, Angela drove the BMW four-by-four east out of London to pick up the M25. The plan she and Bronson had come up with was of necessity simple. She’d just dropped him off in northeast London, where the streets were still largely deserted, and was going to drive out of the city on the M11 motorway as far as Stansted Airport. There, she’d leave the BMW in the long-term car park, where a vehicle on foreign plates would be less likely to attract attention, and hire a car.

She knew it was possible, or perhaps probable, that her credit card purchases were being monitored by the police, in case she led them to Bronson, but he was miles away so it really wouldn’t matter if she was stopped and questioned at the airport. And she had all morning to complete the transaction.

In the event, nobody-neither the Avis booking clerk nor a couple of patrolling police officers bristling with weapons and body armor who were lurking nearby-took the slightest notice of her, and twenty minutes after she’d handed over her credit card, she was driving back down the M11 toward London, in a one-year-old Ford Focus.

And worrying about Bronson.

Bronson was cold and, he hoped, invisible. He certainly thought he looked the part. In a restaurant, nobody really notices waiters-they’re just members of staff who take orders, deliver plates of food and clear the tables. On the streets of London, and most other capital cities, the homeless and the beggars are the nonpeople, shapes hunched in doorways or lying on cardboard, perhaps with a plastic cup in front of them holding a few low-value coins. But for the most part, people notice them but don’t see them, averting their eyes or stepping around them. And that’s what he was counting on.

He hadn’t shaved for a couple of days-not a deliberate or planned move, just dictated by the circumstances and their movements in Germany and Poland-and his face was grubby with what looked like ingrained dirt, an effect it had taken him some time to achieve. He was wearing the oldest pair of trainers he owned, dirty and torn jeans, a hooded sweatshirt and a camouflage-pattern jacket that he thought he’d thrown out years ago. Angela had recovered all of those from Bronson’s house in the early hours of the morning, but only after they’d spent twenty minutes making absolutely sure that the property wasn’t under surveillance. He also had a battered rucksack that contained a handful of chocolate bars, cans of soft drink, a couple of sweaters, Angela’s mobile phone, which was switched off, and the silencer and spare magazines for the Walther. The pistol was in his pocket, just in case. Beside him was a grubby old sack, inside which were the two Heckler amp; Koch submachine guns and extra magazines, each wrapped up in a couple of old sweaters and a tattered blanket.

At that moment he was sitting in the doorway of a small office building about a quarter of a mile from the stadium in Stratford where the opening ceremony was due to start early that evening, and trying to decide what to do next. He was also still wondering what Marcus had planned, because the one thing that was already abundantly clear was that getting anywhere near the stadium, even as a pedestrian, was as near impossible as made no difference.

Getting close with a vehicle, and especially a vehicle big enough to carry an object even half the size of Die Glocke, was simply a nonstarter. Every street Bronson had tried to walk down was cordoned off, steel barriers placed across the entrances preventing access to any unauthorized vehicles, police officers in attendance, as they’d probably been for days. And already, despite the early hour, the whole area was starting to come alive.

There were people everywhere, walking to and fro, cameras clicking as they took photographs of each other, sometimes posing in front of the Olympic advertising slogans, information boards and illuminated displays, which listed the timetable of events. Establishing shots, Bronson supposed you could call them, for the myriad picture collections they were obviously intending to compile of the event. There was a huge buzz of excitement in the air as people realized that the time for the Games had finally come, and that the greatest sporting contest in the world was about to be held in Britain’s capital city.

Bronson had been moved on twice by regular police officers and once by a community policeman, and every time he’d kept his head down and simply complied, weaving his way through the crowds of people as he looked for another quiet spot where he could sit down and wait. The doorway of the office building he was occupying wasn’t ideal, but he knew that he needed to stay in that vicinity, so it would have to do.

He wriggled about, trying unsuccessfully to get comfortable; cardboard may have provided some insulation against the cold seeping up through the paving slabs, though he wasn’t convinced about that, but it did nothing to cushion his body.

People walked past him, none making eye contact and most stepping well away from him, to the other side of the pavement, as if being homeless was a contagious condition. Then one man didn’t. He was tall and solidly built, but very scruffily dressed. He had the air of a man looking for something. Or someone.

When he saw Bronson half-lying in the doorway, he crossed the street and walked over to stand beside him. Then he prodded the recumbent figure with the toe of one grubby sneaker.

“You look like shit,” Dickie Weeks said, looking down at him.

“That’s the general idea, Dickie,” Bronson replied. “You don’t look that sharp yourself.”

“Blending in, mate, blending in. I’m feeling charitable. Fancy a cuppa?”

“Thought you’d never bloody ask.”

Bronson climbed slowly to his feet-even the comparatively short time he’d been sitting on the pavement seemed to have driven a chilling ache through his bones-and the two men walked away down the road.

“You must know a good cafe,” Weeks said, “you being a street person and all that. Job not going so well, is it?”

“Give it a rest, Dickie,” Bronson snapped. “This is serious.”

They walked into a cafe that was little more than a glorified snack bar, Bronson attracting hostile glances from several of the men sitting there, but his bulk was obviously sufficiently intimidating to prevent anyone saying anything to him.

“Tea?” Weeks asked.

“Coffee: hot, black and strong,” Bronson replied. “And a bacon sarnie if your funds will stretch that far.”

While Weeks strode across to the counter, Bronson walked over to a table in the far corner, as far away from everyone else as possible, pulled out one of the chairs and sat down, his back to the window.

As he did so, two men at another of the tables stood up and walked out, one of them glancing across at Bronson with a disgusted expression as he reached the door.

A couple of minutes later Weeks walked over to him, carrying two chipped mugs, and sat down facing him.

Bronson wrapped his hands around the mug, relishing the warmth of the china.

“I asked for it extra strong,” Weeks said, “which means you’ve got two spoonfuls of instant in there instead of only one. Breakfast’ll be along as soon as they’ve found a pig to kill. So,” he lowered his voice slightly, “what the hell’s going on here, Chris?”

“First, thanks for that Llama. It got me out of trouble once, and saved my life as well. I’ll be keeping it.”

Weeks nodded. “I take it somebody who was walking around the place now isn’t?”

“If you mean did I use it to kill someone, the answer’s yes. Or, to be exact, I didn’t pull the trigger, because somebody else did, but there is a body out there with a traceable bullet in it. Not that anyone’s ever likely to find it.”

Weeks nodded.

“Glad it worked for you,” he said. “But that’s not why you asked me to meet you here. And it doesn’t explain why you look like you’re auditioning for a part in a low-budget zombie movie.”

“Long story,” Bronson replied, then broke off as a grossly overweight man, wearing a grayish apron decorated with an interesting and comprehensive selection of stains, only some of which appeared to be from food, waddled across to their corner and deposited two plates on the table in front of them.

“Bacon butties,” he announced, in case either man didn’t recognize the greasy offering he’d presented, then returned to his position behind the counter.

Bronson looked at the roll, butter oozing from all sides and a couple of bits of bacon sticking out of one end. He lifted off the top half of the roll, applied a liberal helping of brown sauce from the encrusted plastic bottle on the table, then picked up the roll and took a bite. It tasted wonderful.

“Right, Dickie,” he said, and outlined what had happened to him since the two men had last met.

Weeks sat in silence, listening intently and eating his way through his own bacon sandwich. His eyes widened as Bronson described the events in the Wenceslas Mine, and he even put down his mug at one point.

“Bloody hell, so Angela shot the bastard? Good for her. Hey, are you two an item again, or what?”

“More or less, I suppose, but that’s not really too important right now.”

“Sorry, you’re right. So what do you want me to do? And what happened to the MP5 that German comedian was toting?”

Bronson nodded toward the sack lying on the floor beside him.

“It’s in there,” he replied. “In fact, there are two of them, plus three Walther pistols, one of them with a proper suppressor.”

“You’re selling them?” Weeks asked, his professional interest clearly aroused.

Bronson shook his head.

“Help me sort out this mess and you can have them as a gift,” he said.

“That’s a deal. Now, you’ve told me what happened, but I still don’t know what you expect me-or you, for that matter-to do about it. All you think you know is that this bunch of German thugs will be trying to attack northeast London, probably during the Olympic opening ceremony, which, I’d like to remind you, will be starting in less than twelve hours. But you don’t know what the weapon looks like, or even what it does. It could be some kind of dirty bomb, a straight explosive device, or even-and I really hope you’re wrong about this-a pocket-sized nuke. That’s the worst-case scenario, because the yield from even a suitcase nuke like the Russians developed would be enough to flatten a large part of this area.”

“You know more about this kind of stuff than I do,” Bronson said. “What was the yield of those weapons?”

“Nobody knows for sure, but the best estimates suggest around a hundred kilotons, one hundred thousand tons of TNT equivalent. Put one of those babies in the ground floor of Centrepoint and light the blue touch paper, and all you’d be left with would be a bloody great hole about a mile across and full of rubble.”

Bronson shook his head. “I didn’t know they were that powerful,” he said.

“But that’s a nuclear weapon,” Weeks reminded him, “designed for use by the Russian special forces, the Spetsnaz. We still don’t know what this Bell thing is supposed to do. Or how big it is, or where they intend to place it.”

“That’s the trouble. All I do know is that Marcus and his cronies clearly have an agenda, and the core of their plan involves launching a serious attack on this part of London. Before the German who Angela shot in the mine finally died, he told me it wasn’t a terrorist weapon or a terrorist attack they were launching. He described it as a ‘vengeance weapon,’ like the V1 and the V2, and that’s what worries me the most. Whatever the Bell was designed to do, even back in the Second World War, it was still capable of killing people. I told you about this chamber in the mountain, a chamber lined with ceramic bricks-”

“That could suggest it produced radiation,” Weeks interrupted. “The Nazis might have been experimenting with different materials to try to contain it. And I have a feeling that ceramic materials are used for shielding in some parts of modern nuclear power stations, but don’t quote me on that.”

“Anyway,” Bronson continued, “we know for a fact that whatever it produced was lethal in nineteen forty-five, and since then this bunch of brand-new Nazis have had about seventy years to get it right, to miniaturize it or increase its yield or do whatever else they wanted. I think we have to assume that this weapon represents a clear and immediate danger to London.”

“And you can’t go to the police because…?” Weeks asked.

“I’ve tried,” Bronson said resignedly. “And I got the run-around, just as I expected, because of what’s happened. What the Met wants is to see me sitting in a cell facing firearms charges. Trying to get them to look beyond that is almost impossible. That’s the police mentality, I suppose. Arrest somebody for whatever offense they’re known to have committed, and take no notice of the bigger picture.”

“So it’s all down to you and me?”

Bronson nodded. “There are no more strings I can pull, nobody I can talk to who will take me seriously, and even if I knew somebody who had the kind of clout we’d need to get this area thoroughly searched, I haven’t got a shred of evidence to support what I believe is going to happen.”

“You’re not exactly filling me with confidence here,” Weeks said. “This Olympic site is huge, and the weapon could be anywhere. Oh, and by the way, access to the site is severely restricted, so if you had some idea about getting inside and looking for the Bell there, that isn’t going to happen.”

“I don’t think we need to get inside the Olympic Park or any of the stadiums,” Bronson said. “Like you said, access is very restricted, and it has been since pretty much the start of the construction. And today nobody’s getting anywhere near it without a ticket, and certainly not in a vehicle. I don’t think that Marcus and his pals would have been able to get a device positioned inside a building on any part of the Olympic complex. Don’t forget, all the reports about the Bell emphasized that it needed huge amounts of power, which would mean more than just plugging it in to a wall socket, and I can’t think of any way that they could have arranged to get the device installed and provide a dedicated high-voltage power supply to it.”

“Depends on how competent the architects and builders were, I suppose. But on the other hand, the builders would’ve been working to detailed plans, so if the device wasn’t on the plan, it probably wouldn’t have got installed. So you’re probably right.”

“And there’s another thing,” Bronson went on. “It wasn’t so much something that Marcus said, more the way that he said it. When I was with him in Berlin, I got the distinct impression that the device was on its way here, not already in position, which has to mean they’ll be putting it somewhere outside the complex. That means in a vehicle or they’re going to get it into a building near the site.”

For half a minute or so, the two men ate and drank in silence, then Weeks glanced out of the window, put down his mug and looked at Bronson.

“What?”

“Anybody know you round here?” Weeks asked.

“Not really. That group I was supposed to infiltrate was based in this area, but that’s all. Why?”

“Because when we arrived in this exclusive establishment, two men got up and left. One of them is now standing on the opposite side of the road looking this way, but I’ve no idea where the second one’s gone. I’ve never seen either of them before, so it looks to me as if they recognized you, and I wouldn’t mind betting we’re going to have company any time now.”

Bronson turned round slightly in his seat so that he had a view of the street outside. The figure Weeks was talking about was leaning against the wall of the building opposite, a cigarette cupped in his left hand, staring across toward the cafe. Bronson had a good memory for faces, and now that he could see the man clearly, he recognized him immediately. He’d never spoken to him, but he’d been one of the group at the warehouse when Bronson’s true identity had made the news.

Weeks was right. Bronson had no doubt that within a few minutes Georg or some of his men would be arriving, and because of what had happened in Germany and Poland, their response to his presence in the area would be violent, and possibly fatal.

“Well spotted, Dickie. We need to get out of here, right now. You reckon there’s a back entrance?”

“Bound to be,” Weeks said, standing up. “There’ll be a backyard or something.”

The two men walked across to the counter, lifted the flap and stepped behind it, to the immediate and very obvious irritation of the proprietor, who stepped over to block their path.

“You can’t go through here. It’s private.”

“Get the hell out of my way, fat boy, unless you really like hospital food,” Weeks said, lifting a large clenched fist to the man’s face.

For a second or two, it looked as if the cafe owner was going to try his luck, but then he shook his head and stepped to one side.

Weeks led the way through the back room, like the rest of the cafe a dark and grubby space, the shelves lined with tins and packets, a couple of fridges and a large freezer humming away in one corner, toward the rear door.

And as he opened it and stepped outside, Bronson realized what should have been obvious to him from the first. The only reason the man would have had for standing in plain view on the opposite side of the road in front of the cafe was to alert Bronson to his presence, and force him to pick another, less public, way out.

In fact, the man had been acting like a sheepdog, driving the sheep-Bronson and Weeks-exactly where he wanted them to go: out of the cafe through the back entrance.

Because the moment they stepped outside and the door clicked shut on the latch, Bronson saw a group of five men waiting about twenty yards away, covering the only exit from the narrow alleyway.